Jackie Chan joins combat to avoid wasting endangered pangolin

Martial arts celebrity Jackie Chan is participating in a marketing campaign in opposition to consuming endangered pangolins, as Malaysia takes steps to ban the searching of the animal.

The Rush Hour star seems in a video the place he trains a trio of pangolins to make use of kung fu to defend themselves, whereas urging viewers in opposition to consuming pangolin meat or utilizing their scales for conventional medication, Taiwan News reports.

The “Kung Fu Pangolin” marketing campaign, headed by the WildAid organisation, may even seem on billboards in China and Vietnam, the 2 largest pangolin consuming nations within the Asia area.

Stating how earlier campaigns in opposition to shark fins and rhino horn have been profitable, WildAid chief Peter Knights had excessive hopes for the pangolin marketing campaign. “Jackie reaches an enormous viewers throughout Asia and there are clear indicators these campaigns have had an affect and attitudes are altering,” he stated.

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Jackie Chan’s educated pangolins shield themselves from a poacher

The brand new marketing campaign arrives as one Malaysian state takes pressing strikes to outlaw the searching of the animal.

The federal government of Sabah, on the northern a part of Borneo, is to hurry by way of strikes to make pangolins a “completely protected” species, The Malay Mail newspaper says.

As soon as authorized by the state’s Cupboard, searching the animal will carry a compulsory jail sentence of as much as 5 years. Final month, officers seized eight tonnes of pangolin scales at a port in Sabah.

The transfer comes after warnings that continued poaching poses an existential menace not solely to pangolins, however to the biodiversity of the area, the Clean Malaysia environmental information web site says.

“If these unlawful searching actions usually are not checked, the inhabitants of the protected and endangered wildlife species within the state will shrink very quickly,” Rahimatsah Amat of the Sabah Environmental Belief stated.

Pangolins are essentially the most trafficked mammals on this planet, and over 1,000,000 have been poached from the wild within the final ten years, WildAid says. The meat is taken into account a delicacy, whereas the scales are thought to have properties in traditional Chinese medicine.

When attacked, the animals roll right into a ball and use their scales for defence. Whereas this may be tremendous in opposition to pure predators, it makes it simple for poachers to catch these shy, nocturnal animals.